Ask managers being contacted by recruiters who call to ask them on their former subordinates or colleagues how the telephone reference checks are done in practice and you will often hear that recruiters are excited about the chosen candidates beforehand and that they want to hear why to hire them. No more than a five-minute phone call is then managed in a way so that the manager do not accidentally say something because of what the recruiter would have to start looking for someone else.
Such a checking of references is a waste of time and money for all the sides involved. ERE.net therefore brought some practical tips on how to replace superficial calls with real reference checking.
1. Ask for more references
Before you start calling the people mentioned in the CV of a selected job applicant, ask the applicant to provide you with contacts on more of his former managers and colleagues. If the applicant refuse to tell you other names, you should want to know why.
2. Do not let reference checks to the uninitiated
HR professionals working with the hiring managers who are searching for people for their teams are the best qualified for the reference checks. Do not delegate reference checking to junior members of your team who do not work directly on the selection of people for a given team.
3. Make sure you have enough time and clear mind for the calls
If you want to use the five minutes you have between meetings productively, rather process one e-mail than a phone call to check a reference. The aim your phone call should be to find out as many details as possible for which you will need more than five minutes. Before the phone call, remind yourself that you should look at the candidates neutrally or with a slight degree of skepticism.
4. Make the respondents to be sincere
Some respondents will not be willing to talk to you too much. Your task is to convince them to be more sincere. A proven technique is to use a phrase like: "I wonder that if I hire this candidate, I will not have to call you again in half a year and ask why you did not warn me about who I were going to hire."
5. Prepare pen and paper
Do not rely only on your memory. During the individual calls, try to write the most of the collected information so that you could easily compare the information from different people.
6. Prepare specific questions in advance
Do not ask for too general things like: "What can you say about Mr. Smith?" Ask for specific examples of problems that might arise in cooperation with the candidate being checked, for example: "Can you give an example of how Mr. Smith responds to criticism?"
7. Respond to the discovered information
For each piece of a newly discovered information, be ready to ask the questions "Why?" and "Can you give a specific example?"
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